Dan Fumano: A second exodus of directors from the NPA board

During the week when Vancouver’s oldest political party may have preferred to focus on the formal launch of their campaign to retake city hall, the Non-Partisan Association is dealing with more internal turnover after a trio of directors departed the party’s board.

Last week marked the second recent wave of departures from the NPA’s board, after four directors resigned last month, in the weeks after NPA Coun. Hector Bremner’s bid for the party’s mayoral nomination was rejected by the board. The NPA president has suggested the more recent resignations could also be tied to the party’s selection of candidates, but at least one of the departed directors disputed this.

All three of the most recently departed NPA directors had only taken their respective positions within the past year, and all were members of a slate supported at last November’s party AGM by another failed candidate for the party’s mayoral nomination, Glen Chernen, who lost out on the NPA mayoral nomination in a vote early this month to Ken Sim.

NPA president Gregory Baker described the new changes as positive steps for the organization.

“These departures are just a minor distraction,” Baker said. “It’s just a part of normal turnover. Candidates change, and all of a sudden, your level of interest changes.”

But one of the directors who quit last week, Marinos Anagnostopoulos, took issue with Baker’s statement about directors’ interest levels dropping with the changing of candidates, saying his own departure wasn’t a result of Sim winning the mayoral nomination. Instead, Anagnostopoulos said he wished the best for Sim in his political career, but resigned his NPA director position because he had “moral objections” about the direction the party was heading. He declined to discuss details.

Some new names, including past NPA directors, have been appointed to the board, Baker said, adding he’s happier now with the board’s current makeup.

“Things are improving daily, in terms of bringing people that contribute, that will volunteer, that will raise money, that are team players,” Baker told Postmedia.

Last Wednesday, at an NPA gala at the Four Seasons Hotel downtown, the party “launched Ken, and the start of what will be our campaign,” Baker said.

But the following day marked the arrival of a new competitor for the NPA this year on the right side of Vancouver’s political spectrum. Last Thursday, at the launch event for former Conservative Member of Parliament Wai Young’s mayoral campaign, Michael Lount, an NPA director elected as part of the Chernen-supported slate in November, milled around the crowd of supporters. When The Vancouver Sun approached Lount at the rally, he said he’d decided to leave the NPA board and the party the day before, “due to governance, compliance and accountability issues.”

“It’s a party in full decline as it moves to the extreme elitist end of things. We tried to bring them into the mainstream and update them, but we were out-voted. And fair enough, that’s politics,” Lount said. “So you’ve got to move on.”

Back at the NPA’s June 3 mayoral nomination meeting, after Sim’s victory was announced, Chernen said he’d run for council with the party. Chernen reiterated those plans in a mass email sent to NPA members on June 7, writing: “With Ken at my side it has been easy for me to decide to run for council with him … I am grateful for Ken’s support after I told him that I would gladly run with him for a councillor position.”

When asked Monday about Chernen’s email indicating Sim supported his council bid, Sim replied by email: “We have not received an application for councillor from Glen Chernen.”

For the last two weeks, Chernen has been quiet publicly. On Monday, Chernen did not reply to email and phone messages asking if his plans have changed since his June 7 email to NPA members.

And it’s still not a done deal for Chernen to run for council with the NPA, said Baker. If Chernen does want to seek an NPA nomination to run for council, Baker said, “he would fit into all the other applicants that will submit their applications and he will be considered as well.”

Though Chernen was approved earlier to run for the party’s mayoral nomination, he’d still have to be approved to run for council, Baker said, adding: “it is a different process, and we’re still working on that.”

The NPA board, with its new directors, has yet to decide how candidates will be chosen run for council, park board and school board, Baker said, nor have they decided yet how many candidates they’ll run. The board will make those decisions at some point in the coming weeks, Baker said, but there is no set timeline for those decisions, or for the release of the party’s platform.

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